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Western Digital’s new SSDs offer faster speeds and higher capacities

Hard disk manufacturer Western Digital acquired SSD specialist SanDisk last year. Now we are seeing the first fruits of the new relationship in the shape of two new SSD lineups – one under each company’s brand name – that are the first to deploy SanDisk’s new 64-layer 3D NAND chips. According to Western Digital the new chips offer ‘lower power consumption and higher performance, endurance and capacities.’

The new Western Digital Blue and SanDisk Ultra 3D lines are identical in terms of capacity, controllers and performance specs but Western Digital’s lineup includes a device in M.2 2280 format factor, which SanDisk’s doesn’t.

According to the spec sheets performance should be very good. The 256GB versions read at 550 MB/s and write at 525 MB/s. The larger capacity SSDs are even a touch quicker at 550 MB/s and 560 MB/s respectively. And the new SSDs are not only fast but also reliable. Western Digital states the mean time to failure (MTTF) of all devices as 1.75 million hours. If you think the new drives could help fulfill your storage and archiving needs, you’ll be happy to hear they are quite affordable; 256GB drives start at $100. Pricing information for the larger 500GB, 1TB and 2TB models is not available yet.